General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The immediate, radical changes that America needs in order to survive. Lots of them. [View all]antigone382
(3,682 posts)...as this National Park Services page makes clear.
http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/temperate-rain-forests.htm
Now, my understanding is that those forests are protected in the United States. However, whether at-risk rainforests exist within the U.S. is not really a factor in whether their destruction is attached to our country's fate. There is no doubt that the large scale destruction of tropical rainforests throughout the world is a devastating exacerbation of the already dire picture regarding climate change. There is very little doubt that climate change is already having devastating impacts on our agricultural and economic system, stretching our emergency management services to the very brink, and causing a great deal of suffering, particularly among those who live in substandard housing with inadequate means of keeping themselves cool on dangerously hot days. And similarly, I have very little doubt that a large factor of rainforest destruction is at least partially connected to U.S. demand, either for the lumber itself, the agricultural products that can be grown on the land, or the minerals that can be extracted from the land.
We live in a global economy, in which our society is absolutely dependent on the resources and work forces of other nations to survive. This has its good and bad elements. But discussing America's problems as if they are all firmly located within America's geographic boundaries is unsophisticated, somewhat immoral (given that many of our own problems are tied to global disparities and other forms of injustice), and, at the crux of the issue, totally inadequate to solve those problems.